“Tired” Hanley Ramirez not starting tonight for Florida Marlins

All Star SS Hanley Ramirez is not starting tonight. Emilio Bonifacio is leading off and playing short.

“Hanley is healthy,” manager Edwin Rodriguez said. “It’s obvious that he’s a little bit tired. That’s why he is struggling at the plate. I don’t think it’s a lack of effort. He’s just tired.”

Hanley is a career .375 (6-for-16) hitter against Pirates starter Paul Maholm, but he hasn’t exactly looked very sharp lately in his at-bats, going 1-for-11 in the first three games of the Pirates series. He was swinging at pitches out of the strike zone.

Bonni is 0 for 3 against Maholm.

Hanley is batting .283 with 16 homers and 60 RBI this year — not a bad season at all but a disappointing encore to last year when he won the NL batting title with a .342 average, hit 24 homers and had a career-high 106 RBI.

MILLER TIME
I’ll have a notebook story later tonight on left-hander Andrew Miller, who was called up from Class AA Jacksonville. Don’t look for Miller in the starting rotation any time soon.

Edwin says the plan is for RHP Alex Sanabia to stay in the rotation for a while. Miller could eventually pitch in long relief but will start out going just one inning.

He was 1-8 with a 6.01 ERA in 18 starts in Jacksonville, but Edwin says the team believes in Miller, who has struggled to throw his upper-90s fastball for strikes.

“When you have that kind of arm, you just don’t give up on those guys,” he said.

Miller believes he’s a better pitcher than his statistics indicate.

“From my own perspective and from the perspective of people around me is that it’s just kind of been tough luck and sometimes things don’t go your way,” he said.